For Our Girls –a short poem – Christmas came and now New Year/ For Chibok girls and Gumsuri victims Chibok girls we shed a tear/

Too many ‘Fellow Nigerians’ live in fear/ Even questioning if God is near. And so, too many families will enter 2015 without word of their loved ones and will little hope of ever hearing from them again. The report that Boko Haram has a large contingent of neighbouring country foreigners should raise the stakes to a war situation, an invasion situation, even if the murder of an unknown number of Nigerian security officials is taken as an ‘insurgency’.

As we pray for the return of all victims of the Boko Haram and the Fulani Wars, what do the two major political candidates offer beyond saying ‘peace’? Being a Fulani himself and a general, Buhari must have strong views on the lethal ‘Fulani matter’. What are his views on his strategy to end the ‘Fulani Herdsmen–Nigerian Farmers’ violence? He and we will bear in mind that the ‘Railway Transport of Cows‘ option has been suggested, as has the ‘Trailer Transport of Cows’. Indeed with railways, this problem would quickly become of historical importance –though the dead will remain dead, the crops will remain destroyed, the orphans will remain orphans, the widows and widowers will remain without a kobo in compensation.

Unfortunately, Buhari has never proved himself a lover of modern transport or the modernisation of Nigeria, as he with or without Babangida, cancelled Lagos State’s Jakande Rail in 1983, hailed as solution to Lagos gridlock, at a suggested compensation cost of $184million penalty. Even when he was chairman at PTF, a lot of the resources ‘appeared’ diverted to the North but the railways unfortunately stagnated further. So it will be a miracle if Buhari builds an inch of railways or roads during his era should he become President. Of course we know what Jonathan is doing in this area but we must question its slowness and the cost. There are such huge outsized contracts that make nonsense of any purported anti-corruption drive. The result is an overpricing and obvious reduction in value of the end product – a proposed multi-state modern rail link nationwide.

We spent five and a half hours getting from Ibadan to Lagos, just 110km, last Sunday December 20, another four hours Lagos-Ibadan on Sunday December 27, 18 kilometres an hour –on an expressway. Has government no shame even if it has no road management skills? Zero movement or massed vehicles are a danger. This regular crisis is a catastrophe waiting to become a mass carnage. The difficulties at the time I travelled had nothing to do with the Berger repairs as there are no repairs going on there and no church services at Redeemed or the Mountain of Fire. It is about bad roads and poor planning for the Ember months increase in traffic, in spite of noisy FRSC readiness claims and the noisy FERMA doing nothing to ’make smooth our paths’ just before and immediately before and after Redeemed, at Ibafo, Mowe, Berger, the bus stops in Ibafo, Mowe and at Berger in Lagos. Government should have sent its engineering staff to identify the top 10 or 30 or 100 worst bottleneck bad portions; secondly it would have immediately filled them; thirdly it would have widened the road at those turning points to accommodate turning traffic and also bus stops. Government should have led these same engineers and road maintenance departments to liaise with an increasingly questionable FRSC, to stop stopping innocent passing vehicles at Ogere, but rather to ensure safe and unhindered travel at difficult spots. Unfortunately too many Nigerian ministry and organisational officials actually plan evil, not good, for the traveling public who are mere victims to be preyed upon by the use and abuse of the power of the uniform.

Redeemed, Ibafo and Mowe are ‘towns with no overhead bridges and yet dual carriageways run through them. It is similar in many towns in Nigeria. What type of Nigerian human beings, engineers, have not built the 100 overhead bridges and 100 more turning points needed to reduce strain of jaywalking and turning.

Government must solve this problem. Nigerians cannot wait four years for road completion, fall in oil prices and oil sales or not. Government should negotiate with construction giant Julius Berger to open all available road surface and start fixing the top 100 trouble spots first and start major construction from the Lagos end of the Ibadan Lagos side. By starting at the Sagamu junction, the contractors are delivering more vehicles quicker to the bottlenecks at Redeemed, Mowe and Ibafo and Berger. Fixing Mountain of Fire, Mowe and Ibafo now will allow quick exit of vehicles from these bottlenecks.

Another key problem is the abuse of the road shoulder for driving. Those in the correct lanes look like idiots as all those who overtake on the shoulder will get in front sometimes 100 to 200 vehicles and six lanes are formed. This is so easily solved by a more efficient FRSC which should allow shoulder driving only in specific circumstances of accidents and lane obstruction. Government can also insert plastic barriers every 50 metres on all shoulders to discourage the practice. May your roads be rough, the Chinese quote proclaims as a prayer. The road of most Nigerians is rough enough from road management incompetence. HNYIA.